The 2012 U.S. November elections saw the first presidential debate generate 10 million Tweets, of which more than 31 million tweets were about the poll on Election Day. Media covered the entire campaign while talks of the U.S elections skyrocketed on Twitter and had up to 327,452 tweets per minute (TPM).

Football is the world’s most popular sport and immediately found its place on Twitter conversations. Spain won against Italy with a 4-0 score with Juan Mata’s sparking 267,200 Tweets per minute. Other notable moments saw Italy’s Mario Balotelli making a second goal against Germany, Spain’s Cesc Fabregas’ goal against Italy, and Spain winning against Portugal in the semifinals.

Super Bowl XLVI buffs tweeted their thoughts and emotions on this year’s Giants-Patriots match on February 5. Twitter followed around 13.7 million Super Bowl tweets while the game progressed, one million of which flooded in the last five minutes. Conversations reached its peak at 201,466 TPM when the Patriots failed to complete a pass that sealed a victory for the Giants. The halftime show featuring Madonna recorded 108,077 TPM.

The 2012 Summer World Olympic Games held in London lasted for 16 days and generated about 150 million tweets, while the Spice Girls’ reunion performance during its closing ceremonies collected the highest spike of the entire sporting event at more than 116,000 TPM. The largest conversation happened when Jamaican runner Usain Bolt, also the most-discussed athlete of the event, won gold in the 200-meter sprint at 80,000 TPM.

This year’s MTV Video Music Awards show saw more than 52 million votes cast through tweets for the “Most Sharable Video”. The show raked in around 14.7 million tweets during its run, and the highest spike at 98,307 TPM went to One Direction’s Best Pop Video winning moment.

News of singer Whitney Houston’s death on February 11 at the Beverly Hilton Hotel was talk of the town on Twitter, and fans tweeted to sympathize and thanked her contributions to the music industry. It generate more than 10 million tweets at 73,662 TPM. Followers and fellow artists honored her with almost two million tweets during a live telecast of her tribute and funeral.

Tweets about Hurricane Sandy wreaking havoc and causing New York City power outages between October 27 and November 1 saw people sending more than 20 million tweets on its impact and wake. During the blackout, use of mobile devices from people in the area surged more than twice from the two days leading to the disaster. People tweeted their way to help. Twitter said the word “donate” had a 180-day peak and the phrase “donate blood” a 365-day peak.

SOPA in the House of Representatives and PIPA in the Senate were topics of heated debates on Twitter. The two contentious antipiracy bills in the U.S. Congress sparked discussion, with “SOPA” mentions busting from 106,000 to 3.5 million in 24 hours and 86,500 “PIPA” mentions soared to more than 655,500.